Epidermal Macabre

Related poetry:

1. Danse macabre Death came to me in a mini skirt As skittish as a kitten, And said : ” I am come – for your final flirt ” , But added : ” You don’t seem smitten “. Says I : ” Well – not in my wildest whim Did I picture you looking like this, I’d […]...
2. Give Me Back My Rags #1 Give me back my rags My rags of pure dreaming Of silk smiling of striped foreboding Of my cloth of lace My rags of spotted hope Of burnished desire of chequered glances Of skin from my face Give me back my rags Give me when I ask you nicely...
3. Sonnet 112: Your love and pity doth th' impression fill Your love and pity doth th’ impression fill Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow; For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o’ergreen my bad, my good allow? You are my all the world, and I must strive To know my shames and praises from your tongue; None else to […]...
4. Sonnet CXII Your love and pity doth the impression fill Which vulgar scandal stamp’d upon my brow; For what care I who calls me well or ill, So you o’er-green my bad, my good allow? You are my all the world, and I must strive To know my shames and praises from your tongue: None else to […]...
5. The Apparition When by thy scorn, O murd’ress, I am dead, And that thou think’st thee free From all solicitation from me, Then shall my ghost come to thy bed, And thee, feigned vestal, in worse arms shall see; Then thy sick taper will begin to wink, And he, whose thou art then, being tired before, Will, […]...
6. Blue dress i can see through the blue Dress when you stand In the doorway – the light Come indoors softly like A cat between your legs When you walk and The dress flows Over the curved pebble Of your belly into The blue pool my eye Is already there Waiting for the ripple I have the […]...
7. Sonnet 72: O, lest the world should task you to recite O, lest the world should task you to recite What merit lived in me that you should love After my death, dear love, forget me quite; For you in me can nothing worthy prove- Unless you would devise some virtuous lie To do more for me than mine own desert, And hang more praise upon […]...
8. Sonnet LXXII O, lest the world should task you to recite What merit lived in me, that you should love After my death, dear love, forget me quite, For you in me can nothing worthy prove; Unless you would devise some virtuous lie, To do more for me than mine own desert, And hang more praise upon […]...
9. The Retreat 1 Happy those early days, when I 2 Shin’d in my angel-infancy! 3 Before I understood this place 4 Appointed for my second race, 5 Or taught my soul to fancy ought 6 But a white, celestial thought; 7 When yet I had not walk’d above 8 A mile or two from my first love, […]...
10. The Naked And The Nude For me, the naked and the nude (By lexicographers construed As synonyms that should express The same deficiency of dress Or shelter) stand as wide apart As love from lies, or truth from art. Lovers without reproach will gaze On bodies naked and ablaze; The Hippocratic eye will see In nakedness, anatomy; And naked shines […]...
11. Rome: Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time’s central city, Rome; Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy. And cracking frieze and rotten metope Express, as though they were an open tome Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome; “Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!” And yet within these ruins’ […]...
12. Portrait of a Motor Car IT’S a lean car… a long-legged dog of a car… a gray-ghost eagle car. The feet of it eat the dirt of a road… the wings of it eat the hills. Danny the driver dreams of it when he sees women in red skirts and red sox in his sleep. It is in Danny’s life […]...
13. The Flea Mark but this flea, and mark in this, How little that which thou deny’st me is; It sucked me first, and now sucks thee, And in this flea our two bloods mingled be; Thou know’st that this cannot be said A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead; Yet this enjoys before it woo, And […]...
14. The Atheist Nor thou, Habib, nor I are glad, When rosy limbs and sweat entwine; But rapture drowns the sense and self, The wine the drawer of the wine, And Him that planted first the grape- O podex, in thy vault there dwells A charm to make the member mad, And shake the marrow of the spine. […]...
15. Genius Genius, like gold and precious stones, Is chiefly prized because of its rarity. Geniuses are people who dash of weird, wild, Incomprehensible poems with astonishing facility, And get booming drunk and sleep in the gutter. Genius elevates its possessor to ineffable spheres Far above the vulgar world and fills his soul With regal contempt for […]...
16. Tears In Sleep All night the cocks crew, under a moon like day, And I, in the cage of sleep, on a stranger’s breast, Shed tears, like a task not to be put away – In the false light, false grief in my happy bed, A labor of tears, set against joy’s undoing. I would not wake at […]...
17. The Morning-Watch 1 O joys! infinite sweetness! with what flow’rs 2 And shoots of glory my soul breaks and buds! 3 All the long hours 4 Of night, and rest, 5 Through the still shrouds 6 Of sleep, and clouds, 7 This dew fell on my breast; 8 Oh, how it bloods 9 And spirits all my […]...
18. Before Sleep I was in love with anatomy The symmetry of my body Poised for flight, The heights it would take Over parents, lovers, a keen Riding over truth and detail. I thought growing up would be This rising from everything Old and earthly, Not these faltering steps out the door Every day, then back again....
19. Crazy Jane And Jack The Journeyman I know, although when looks meet I tremble to the bone, The more I leave the door unlatched The sooner love is gone, For love is but a skein unwound Between the dark and dawn. A lonely ghost the ghost is That to God shall come; I – love’s skein upon the ground, My body […]...
20. 16-bit Intel 8088 chip with an Apple Macintosh You can’t run Radio Shack programs In its disc drive. Nor can a Commodore 64 Drive read a file You have created on an IBM Personal Computer. Both Kaypro and Osborne computers use The CP/M operating system But can’t read each other’s Handwriting For they format (write On) discs in different […]...
21. 6. The Tarbolton Lasses IF ye gae up to yon hill-tap, Ye’ll there see bonie Peggy; She kens her father is a laird, And she forsooth’s a leddy. There Sophy tight, a lassie bright, Besides a handsome fortune: Wha canna win her in a night, Has little art in courtin’. Gae down by Faile, and taste the ale, And […]...
22. The Aliens you may not believe it But there are people Who go through life with Very little Friction or Distress. They dress well, eat Well, sleep well. They are contented with Their family Life. They have moments of Grief But all in all They are undisturbed And often feel Very good. And when they die It […]...
23. Hymn 95 Regeneration. John 1:13; 3:3, etc. Not all the outward forms on earth, Nor rites that God has giv’n, Nor will of man, nor blood, nor birth, Can raise a soul to heav’n. The sovereign will of God alone Creates us heirs of grace Born in the image of his Son, A new, peculiar race. The […]...
24. I Fellowed Sleep I fellowed sleep who kissed me in the brain, Let fall the tear of time; the sleeper’s eye, Shifting to light, turned on me like a moon. So, planning-heeled, I flew along my man And dropped on dreaming and the upward sky. I fled the earth and, naked, climbed the weather, Reaching a second ground […]...
25. No, Thank You John I never said I loved you, John: Why will you tease me day by day, And wax a weariness to think upon With always “do” and “pray”? You Know I never loved you, John; No fault of mine made me your toast: Why will you haunt me with a face as wan As shows an […]...
26. A science so the Savants say A science so the Savants say, “Comparative Anatomy” By which a single bone Is made a secret to unfold Of some rare tenant of the mold, Else perished in the stone So to the eye prospective led, This meekest flower of the mead Upon a winter’s day, Stands representative in gold Of Rose and Lily, […]...
27. To Eliza Eliza, what fools are the Mussulman sect, Who to woman deny the soul’s future existence! Could they see thee, Eliza, they’d own their defect, And this doctrine would meet with a general resistance. Had their prophet possess’d half an atom of sense, He ne’er would have woman from paradise driven; Instead of his houris, a […]...
28. Today This is To-day, a child in white and blue Running to meet me out of Night who stilled The ghost of Yester-eve; this is fair Morn The mother of To-morrow. And these clouds That chase the sunshine over gleaming hills Are thoughts, delighting in the golden change And the ceremony of their drifting state. This […]...
29. A Prayer For My Son Bid a strong ghost stand at the head That my Michael may sleep sound, Nor cry, nor turn in the bed Till his morning meal come round; And may departing twilight keep All dread afar till morning’s back. That his mother may not lack Her fill of sleep. Bid the ghost have sword in fist: […]...
30. Summons Keep me from going to sleep too soon Or if I go to sleep too soon Come wake me up. Come any hour Of night. Come whistling up the road. Stomp on the porch. Bang on the door. Make me get out of bed and come And let you in and light a light. Tell […]...
31. What Then? His chosen comrades thought at school He must grow a famous man; He thought the same and lived by rule, All his twenties crammed with toil; ‘What then?’ sang Plato’s ghost. ‘What then?’ Everything he wrote was read, After certain years he won Sufficient money for his need, Friends that have been friends indeed; ‘What […]...
32. Making Light Of It I call out a secret name, the name Of the angel who guards my sleep, And light grows in the east, a new light Like no other, as soft as the petals Of the blown rose in late summer. Yes, it is late summer in the West. Even the grasses climbing the Sierras Reach for […]...
33. Child In Red Sometimes she walks through the village in her little red dress All absorbed in restraining herself, And yet, despite herself, she seems to move According to the rhythm of her life to come. She runs a bit, hesitates, stops, Half-turns around… And, all while dreaming, shakes her head For or against. Then she dances a […]...
34. Number 8 It was a face which darkness could kill in an instant A face as easily hurt by laughter or light ‘We think differently at night’ she told me once Lying back languidly And she would quote Cocteau ‘I feel there is an angel in me’ she’d say ‘whom I am constantly shocking’ Then she would […]...
35. Yes And No Across a continent imaginary Because it cannot be discovered now Upon this fully apprehended planet- No more applicants considered, Alas, alas- Ran an animal unzoological, Without a fate, without a fact, Its private history intact Against the travesty Of an anatomy. Not visible not invisible, Removed by dayless night, Did it ever fly its ground […]...
36. In A Breton Cemetery They sleep well here, These fisher-folk who passed their anxious days In fierce Atlantic ways; And found not there, Beneath the long curled wave, So quiet a grave. And they sleep well, These peasant-folk, who told their lives away, From day to market-day, As one should tell, With patient industry, Some sad old rosary. And […]...
37. Hope Hope was but a timid friend; She sat without the grated den, Watching how my fate would tend, Even as selfish-hearted men. She was cruel in her fear; Through the bars, one dreary day, I looked out to see her there, And she turned her face away! Like a false guard, false watch keeping, Still, […]...
38. Honor Among Scamps We are the smirched. Queen Honor is the spotless. We slept thro’ wars where Honor could not sleep. We were faint-hearted. Honor was full-valiant. We kept a silence Honor could not keep. Yet this late day we make a song to praise her. We, codeless, will yet vindicate her code. She who was mighty, walks […]...
39. Night Stuff LISTEN a while, the moon is a lovely woman, a lonely woman, lost in a silver dress, lost in a circus rider’s silver dress. Listen a while, the lake by night is a lonely woman, a lovely woman, circled with birches and pines mixing their green and white among stars shattered in spray clear nights. […]...
40. Sonnet 68: Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn Thus is his cheek the map of days outworn, When beauty lived and died as flowers do now, Before these bastard signs of fair were born, Or durst inhabit on a living brow; Before the golden tresses of the dead, The right of sepulchres, were shorn away To live a second life on second head; […]...